MORE FACEBOOK PRIVACY FLAWS

Leave it to good ol’ Facebook.  Once again they’ve implemented new changes they say will make your life better, but (as usual) has most users crying foul.

A couple of days ago, Facebook quietly updated their friend accept/deny feature, without fanfare or even a courteous mention to its users.  Previously, if you received a Friend Request from a total stranger or the old 3rd grade bully you’d rather not be bothered with, you could simply click “Ignore” and poof — they were gone.  But in the interest of making things “better,” Facebook now requires several extra steps to do the exact same task (YAY!  Just what I wanted — more work).  Instead of a fast “Ignore,” Facebook now mandates a new option called “Not Now.” Basically, they are deferring the instant ignore you originally wanted, in hopes that you might later change your mind. Except the tricky part is, those same people you want to ignore can still see all your public info, wall posts, updates and photos.  FAIL!

In case you weren’t aware, when someone sends you a Friend Request, they get immediate access to all the information you’ve made public to Everyone via your privacy settings. Before, once you rejected a Friend Request they were gone for good and no longer privy to your wall posts and public info. But now — well, not so much so. You see, when you click the “Not Now” button, that person merely disappears from your Friend Request page.  But they’re still lurking in the background, reading your every post and viewing your every photo, perhaps totally unbeknownst to and forgotten by you.

So if you pine for the old feature of totally ignoring a Friend Request, you must now take an extra step. The process requires that you click the “Not Now” button, to which Facebook will ask “Do you know “so-and-so”?  To block that person permanently, you must answer NO.  Otherwise, to do it later you’ll have to head on over to your Requests page to block them.

Many users are angry at the change, making it known they simply do not like Facebook’s odd policy of automatically opting everyone IN to everything, then forcing them to later figure out they’ve been opted into something they don’t want, and having to figure out how to get out of it.

This couldn’t have been more of a disaster for Rebecca Javeleau, a British teen who was preparing to celebrate her 15th birthday.  The excited teen intended to invite 15 of her closest friends to an October 7th birthday party at her home. But instead, the invitation was sent out to 21,000 Facebook users!  How, you ask? Because by default, Facebook automatically makes events public to EVERYONE, and forces you to go an extra step or two to make it private.  Well, poor Rebecca didn’t realize this and ended up erroneously inviting 21,000 people to her house — 8000 of which have already RSVP’d as attending.  Her parents were so furious that they cancelled the party and revoked Rebecca’s Facebook account.  Thanks, Facebook!

Is it really such a bad thing to allow Facebook users the common sense ability to pick and choose the wonderful new features they want or don’t want?  Or will Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg continue to force feed us his own personal concept that privacy is dead and we should all just get over it?